In case you were wondering how confident Hyperloop One is about its technology and the potential it holds for the future, look no further than the landing page of its website, which reads, “Be anywhere, move everything, connect everyone.”

It’s that sense of possibility that makes Thea Walsh’s job continually more exciting.

“For us to be able to speed up transportation along this corridor, what it could mean to us is beyond what we can possibly think about right now,” said Walsh, who is the transportation systems and funding director for the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission in Columbus, Ohio. “People and markets make decisions based on time.”

The Chicago-Columbus-Pittsburgh route is one of 10 semifinalists from five countries, selected from more than 2,600 registrations.

As a contender, the midwest megaregion has a lot going for it: one of the world’s cargo-only airports, the country’s second largest inland port (Pittsburgh), and 55 percent of the U.S. population located within a day’s drive of the proposed route.

It also has a connection problem. Passenger rail doesn’t run from Pittsburgh to Columbus, the ride to Chicago is a halting 10 hours, and sometimes the airports don’t even offer direct flights.

To build a hyperloop route presents an unprecedented opportunity to overcome those existing transit barriers, and boost the midwest market, said Walsh.

“We’re a place that gets things done, in the midwest,” she said. “We’re part of the way America gets their goods. Hopefully through this competition, folks understand that we’re a contender for opportunities like this.”

Now, officials from all three cities will work with Hyperloop One to study the commercial viability of the route, and further refine their plans. The company wants to have three operating hyperloop routes by 2021.

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City leaders in McKeesport traced $1.4 million in unpaid taxes to a company that did business there over multiple years.

A tax collection audit firm discovered the loss, but declined to name the company responsible. In a statement Wednesday, Philadelphia-based eCollect Plus said the company is publicly traded and not local.

A partner at eCollect Plus, Michael Hill, said “a multitude” of other companies also owe unpaid taxes to McKeesport. It’s common for municipal tax revenues to go missing, usually due to inadvertent errors in tax reporting, according to Hill.

Ted Zellers has knocked on doors from the West End to the North Side to Polish Hill and beyond, all to ask people if he can have a look in their basements.

“I’ve been surprised about how positive the reactions of people have been,” he said. “I was really worried when I started this that a lot of people would think I was a weirdo for wanting to do this.”

The Lawrenceville resident and amateur photographer is compiling photographs of those lone basement toilets. He said he’s hoping to one day share them in some kind of coffee table book, or eventually a gallery show.